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Transformation

By David Murphy, Vice President ofInnovation and Business Optimization

You have heard me talk about Transformation and you have heard me say that Transformation is really about“us” — it is about you and it is about me. It’s not about “them” or “that group of employees over there” or “thosemanagers” or “those drivers (or operators, accountants, technicians, etc.)” Nope, it’s about you and me.

That is why I am so concerned today as I write this. Let me tell you why.

Recently, I have become aware that in more than a few places, we (notice, I just said “we”) are not ensuringthat we have the optimum tire pressures in our truck tires. Sometimes those pressures are off by a little andsometimes they are off by a lot. There are two reasons why this could happen.

First, we may not be using a properly calibrated gauge. If you are a driver reading this, when was the lasttime you calibrated your gauge? If you are a route manager or district manager or fleet manager, when wasthe last time you checked that you were equipping your employees with properly calibrated gauges?

Remember Total Tire Maintenance (TTM)? It requires gauges be calibrated regularly. Why aren’t we doingit everywhere and always? Well, as part of Service Delivery Optimization (SDO), we have started implementinga process in all new SDO deployments (and will soon go back to all previously installed SDO locations) that wewill all follow to make sure we use properly calibrated gauges. (If you would like to implement this process now,you can. No need to wait! Contact David Denault ddenault@wm.com for details).

Second, I am saddened to report that we have some isolated instances where I believe our drivers are simply notchecking pressures twice a day as they should.

Why does it matter? Well, let me tell you.

One of our tire vendors has said that when we improve our tire pressure maintenance and strictly follow the elementsof TTM, our annual tire cost will improve by about $4 million. This excludes the amount of fuel savings from havingproperly inflated tires— likely another couple of million. We are essentially giving millions of dollars to our vendorsthat could be used to buy new trucks, new disposal equipment, or improving employee training and benefits!

So, when I say that Transformation is about “us,” that is exactly what I mean. It is about me, as well as all the folks atcorporate and in the Areas — we needed to create a simple, repeatable, and easy-to-follow standard process to makesure our employees have calibrated gauges. And it’s about DMs, FMs, and RMs making sure that we follow thatprocess every day, now and forever. It is about drivers using those gauges to accurately record pressures twice perday every day and it is about technicians and FMs getting the right pressures in our tires overnight. Folks, getting ourtire pressures correct is easy. We just need to follow the process. Installing SDO is much harder. If we can’t get tirepressures right, how can we get SDO right?

When we get our tire pressures right every day, we will save millions of dollars and in doing so, we will be able to usethat money to make WM an even better place to work! It’s about us. That’s Transformation!

We partner with our customers and communities to manage and reduce waste from collection to disposal while recovering valuable resources and creating clean, renewable energy.